- Decide which tasks are good and bad candidates for AI help
- Avoid putting personal or confidential data into a prompt
- Check and own the output rather than trusting it
Good jobs and bad jobs
Generative AI predicts plausible text. That makes it strong at some things and dangerous at others.
Good candidates: first drafts, rewording for a different audience, summarising something you already understand, generating options, turning notes into a structure, drafting questions you will then check.
Bad candidates: anything where being confidently wrong is costly. Legal or regulatory answers, statistics, references and citations, safeguarding decisions, assessment judgements about a named person, anything you cannot check.
Never in the prompt
Assume anything you type may be stored and may be used to improve the tool unless your organisation has an agreement saying otherwise.
Keep out:
- Names and any detail that identifies someone
- Safeguarding information, health information, HR case detail
- Unpublished commercial or contractual material
- Anything you would not email to an external supplier
Strip and anonymise first. "A learner has missed three deadlines" works as well as a name, and carries none of the risk.
You want help writing a supportive email to a learner who is falling behind. What is the safe way to use AI?
Accountability and honesty
Three rules that keep you out of trouble:
- You own the output. If it goes out under your name, its errors are yours.
- Verify anything factual. Especially references, figures, dates and quotations. Fabricated citations look completely convincing.
- Be open about use where it matters: assessed work, research, published content, and anywhere your organisation's policy requires a declaration.
Also watch for bias. Training data carries the assumptions of its sources, and AI-written descriptions of people and roles often reproduce stereotypes if you do not check.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see whether it is right and why.
1.Which task is the best candidate for AI help?
2.Before pasting text into an AI tool you should:
3.AI-generated references and citations:
4.Responsibility for an AI-assisted document sent in your name sits with:
5.A sensible attitude to AI bias is:
Which recurring task in your week could AI take 30 minutes off, safely and anonymised?
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